A new breed of leaders shall come to receive the baton: Bereket Simon

A new breed of leaders shall come to receive the baton: Bereket Simon
Posted by admin on July 19, 20120 Comment
By William Davison
(Bloomberg) — Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is taking a break to recover from an unspecified and recent illness and will return to duty once he is well, Communications Minister Bereket Simon said. “Given his enormous and herculean task he’s been shouldering for many decades, exhaustion is visible,” Bereket said. “That’s why EPRDF has been saying a new breed of leaders shall come so that they should receive the baton.”
The illness is a recent development and doctors recommended an extended rest from official duties to speed recovery, he said.
Meles has said that he will step down at the end of his term in 2015, and Bereket said “that’s what we’re expecting and that’s what we’re going to pursue in terms of the succession.” Under Meles, Ethiopia’s government has been a U.S. ally in the fight against insurgencies in the Horn of Africa, especially in Somalia, where the military helped remove an Islamist group.